S&P Global Ratings has pushed back against renewed accusations that it applies unfair and discriminatory standards to African sovereign borrowers, insisting its methodologies are uniform, transparent, and decades-old.
Roberto Sifon-Arevalo, S&P’s global head of sovereign ratings, defended the firm’s approach during an interview with Fintechinsights on the sidelines of an S&P-hosted event at the G20 summit in Johannesburg.
“We don’t treat Africa or Latin America or Asia, we don’t treat anybody differently,” Sifon-Arevalo said. “Our criteria, our methodology, has been public for decades now, and anybody can look at it.”
He argued that criticism often stems from flawed comparisons rather than flawed ratings.
ALSO: SEC To Prioritize ISA Reforms, Fintech-Driven Oversight At 2025 Compliance Summit
“Sometimes when I speak with people looking at Africa specifically, their benchmark is Europe or the United States,” he noted. “I rarely hear benchmarking themselves with Southeast Asia or Latin America.”
While Sifon-Arevalo emphasized the replicability of S&P’s sovereign rating framework, he acknowledged that human judgment remains part of the process. “Look, we’re people, we are entitled to opinions. And our opinion might not be the same as others. We try to do our best.”
His comments follow a Reuters report earlier this week in which a panel of Africa experts urged G20 countries to intensify oversight of global rating firms. The panel, appointed under South Africa’s G20 presidency accused agencies of relying on “flawed and opaque” methodologies that inflate borrowing costs for African governments. It said rating providers demonstrate “perception biases,” frequently assigning higher risk to African states than to peers with similar fundamentals elsewhere.
Recall that in February 2025, the African Union launched the African Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA), an initiative designed to counter longstanding claims of bias from the major global firms. Kenya’s President, William Ruto, unveiled the new agency during an AU meeting in Addis Ababa.
The effort follows a study by the Africa Peer Review Mechanism and the UN Development Programme, which estimated that skewed ratings have cost African economies roughly $75 billion in lost opportunities.
Plans for an Africa-centric rating agency have been underway for years. The AU formally advanced the project in September 2023 amid persistent criticism of the “Big Three” agencies — Moody’s, Fitch, and S&P — over what African leaders describe as a systemic “negative bias” in assessing the continent’s creditworthiness.
Comments 2